Mercies, Joeys issue challenge on Indigenous progress

Published: 28 May 2007

Questioning what has been achieved since the 1967 referendum relating
to Indigenous Australians, leaders of the Mercy and Josephite
congregations have challenged Australia to ensure that Aboriginal
people have "a standard of living commensurate with citizenship in a
developed country".

Speaking
on behalf of three thousand Catholic nuns across Australia,
congregational leaders, Srs Katrina Brill and Karon Donnellon question
how it is that so many Indigenous Australians miss out on the benefits
of citizenship enjoyed by many other Australians.

"Forty years
ago this week," the sisters say in a statement, "almost 91 per cent of
the Australian electorate voted yes to referendum questions which
brought about changes to the Australian constitution."

"The
changes meant, in effect, that for the first time Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander people were acknowledged in the constitution as full
citizens of Australia."

Forty years later, the two congregations
have joined together in a bid to highlight the inequity that still
exists between many Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians, they say.

"Australians
might enjoy technical equality, but it takes more than changes to the
Constitution to guarantee that the benefits of citizenship will be
enjoyed by all," the leaders statement continues.

"Significant
political will from all levels of government is necessary to establish,
in consultation with Indigenous People, ongoing and fully funded
programs to address, in meaningful ways, indigenous disadvantage," the
sisters said.

Josephite sister criticises "prostitution" of language

Meanwhile,
Catholic community leaders met yesterday at the Australian Catholic
University in North Sydney to celebrate the referendum anniversary and
Pentecost day.

In her talk, well-known Josephite Sr Susan
Connelly compared the colonisation process in East Timor with the loss
of Aboriginal language and culture in Australia.

"Each language
has a particular way of interpreting the world, adding to humanity's
store of truth and to its ability to perceive," she told the annual
gathering.

"We are probably unaware of the extent of the loss to the world of the 150 Australian Aboriginal languages which are now dead."

However, the East Timor advocate says that it is not just Aboriginal languages that are being destroyed.

She
accuses the Federal Government of wasting "vast amounts of money" on
advertising that is not intended to inform but to deceive.

"The
attack on truth which is integral to the prostitution of language as
practised by the present Federal Government is behind its inability to
express the sorrow of the population at large for the treatment of the
indigenous peoples of this land," she said.

"The loss of any
language is a loss to the whole human race apart from the death blow to
the culture from which it comes and which it forms," Sr Connelly says.